Shadow of Vyssuivion

We survived, somehow. More, we won. We succeeded in ending the life of a creature older than I can comprehend, a life extending backwards to the earliest I can trace my name, countless generations; a creature who survived the sundering of the world; a Greatwyrm. Vesuvian, the Corroding Shadow, she called herself, and I can see how, at the height of her powers, that name would be meet, but we were…fortunate…enough to encounter her in the waning of her might. Some corruption, some sickness rotted her from the inside, and in the end, she split like fruit too long in the sun.
 
I am not thinking about what she did to Greylyn.
 
Professor Irius Orb’s dry but informative treatise was essential to besting her, in the end. I don’t know how I was able to remember the lengthy section on draconic dispositions and physical characteristics, but there it was, grasped and suddenly understood. A form of magic I don’t love, but it was key: two Orbs, essential to our survival.
 
I am not thinking of Greylyn’s body on the ground, still.
 
It’s hard to not see Magister Clorid desperately clinging to her neck, sliding around gaping wounds, or Alfredo, stumbling under the weight of a tail, a wing, a claw. It’s hard to not be overwhelmed. How close it all came.
Slogging for hours through acid and blood and mud, the shittest hole in all the Deadlands, misery everywhere and us, slicing through sinew and scale, always on a back foot. Stink of acid in our lungs. Burning eyes, tearing up.
 
I am not thinking of a still body taking a breath, or the voice behind me.